Fishing

Fishing works like this: with a rod on your hotbar, stand at a fishing spot and interact with the water, choose a bait, wait for a bite, then reel in. Landed fish drop on the ground at the water’s edge, and each one advances the Fisher inspiration.

Requirements

You need	Why
A rod on the hotbar	One in the backpack is ignored, and you’ll hear “I can’t fish without a fishing rod…”.
Farming mastery 1 or more	Every rod adds Farming itself, so any rod gets you started (Mastery).
Fish in the spot	Each spot only has a few of each fish; see Fish stock.
A bait something here wants, or a fish that bites unbaited	Otherwise nothing can bite.

The twins hand you your first rod, a Basic Rod, in exchange for six clay plates in Two Peas in a Pod. Fishing I (15 green) teaches the recipe, but crafting one takes Flax Thread, which means buying Flax Thread (45 green) beforehand.

Choosing bait

At the start a window asks for a bait from your backpack, or No Bait. Only fish that accept your choice can bite, and the window lists them. A fish you’ve never landed at this spot appears as unknown; a greyed-out one either ignores this bait or has run out.

The bite itself is a weighted roll. Each fish’s odds combine its commonness, its taste for the bait, the time of day and how many of it remain at the spot, so fishing one species down makes it bite less and less. The chances in the tables below assume a fully stocked spot.

Casting consumes one bait immediately, catch or no catch.

Bait	Technology
Breadcrumb Bait	Fishing II (40 green)
Insect Bait	Fishing III (120 green)
Live Bait	Fishing IV, hidden until the story reveals it

Before the first of these, you’re limited to the seven catches that bite with no bait.

Waiting for the bite

1. Be patient. Depending on the fish, the bite comes 1 to 8 seconds after casting. Pressing anything before then scares it off.
2. React. At the bite the float dips and a sign pops up, and you have 0.7 to 2 seconds to press. Any slower and it escapes.

The fight

Holding the button reels in; releasing it lets out line. Once hooked, a fish alternates between brief rests and bouts of fighting. You’re watching two bars, distance and line tension.

Fish is	Holding the button	Letting go
Resting	Pulls it closer; tension builds slowly	Costs nothing
Fighting	Tension shoots up and the line snaps in about a second. If your Farming mastery is under the fish’s Fight, it even drags the fish away	Tension drops fast, but the fish gains a little distance

The rhythm, then, is reel while it rests, release the instant it fights. Bring the fish all the way in to land it; it’s lost if it escapes to the far end or the line breaks. A flashing line warns you it’s about to go.

More Farming mastery means faster reeling during rests. The Fisherman talent reduces every fish’s Fight by between 1 and 6, varying by fish.

The formulas

Per second, where M is Farming mastery (rod bonus included), R the rod’s own bonus, F the fish’s Fight, and resisting is 1 during a fight and 0 during a rest:

• Holding: distance improves by √(M − F × resisting) × 24, or worsens by √(F × resisting − M) × 24 when F × resisting exceeds M. Tension rises by (10 + 500 × resisting + 10 × F) ÷ (5 + 0.1 × (R + M)).
• Releasing: distance worsens by √(F × resisting) × 20, and tension falls by 80 + 3 × (R + M).

Distance starts at 0; 100 lands the fish and −100 loses it. Tension breaks the line at 100.

Worked example: Basic Rod, no other Farming (M = 1, R = 1), hooking a Roach (Fight 2). While it rests you gain 24 a second, about four seconds of reeling in total. Keep holding through a fight and tension climbs roughly 102 a second.

Fish stock

Every spot has a small set number of each fish, listed as Stock in the tables. A catch removes that fish from the spot until it restocks, one fish at a time and never past the original number. With the whole spot empty, your character says “There are no fish left here”.